Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life »

Winifred Gallagher's books include House Thinking, Just the Way You Are (a New York Times Notable Book), Working on God, and The Power of Place. She has written for numerous publications, such as Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times.

Winifred Gallagher revolutionizes our understanding of attention and the creation of the interested life

In Rapt, acclaimed behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher makes the radical argument that the quality of your life largely depends on what you choose to pay attention to and how you choose to do it. Gallagher grapples with provocative questions—Can we train our focus? What's different about the way creative people pay attention? Why do we often zero in on the wrong factors when making big decisions, like where to move?—driving us to reconsider what we think we know about attention.

Gallagher looks beyond sound bites on our proliferating BlackBerries and the increased incidence of ADD in children to the discoveries of neuroscience and psychology and the wisdom of home truths, profoundly altering and expanding the contemporary conversation on attention and its power. Science's major contribution to the study of attention has been the discovery that its basic mechanism is an either/or process of selection. That we focus may be a biological necessity— research now proves we can process only a little information at a time, or about 173 billion bits over an average life—but the good news is that we have much more control over our focus than we think, which gives us a remarkable yet underappreciated capacity to influence our experience. As suggested by the expression “pay attention,” this cognitive currency is a finite resource that we must learn to spend wisely. In Rapt, Gallagher introduces us to a diverse cast of characters—artists and ranchers, birders and scientists—who have learned to do just that and whose stories are profound lessons in the art of living the interested life. No matter what your quotient of wealth, looks, brains, or fame, increasing your satisfaction means focusing more on what really interests you and less on what doesn't. In asserting its groundbreaking thesis—the wise investment of your attention is the single most important thing you can do to improve your well-being—Rapt yields fresh insights into the nature of reality and what it means to be fully alive.

The Washington Post - Paul Bloom

Gallagher devotes much of this engaging book to reviewing the psychology and neuroscience of attention. A journalist and the author of several books about human psychology…Gallagher blends the science nicely with examples of people whose disciplined attention has contributed to their success

Introduction Choosing the Focused Life 1

Chapter 1 Pay Attention: Your Life Depends on It 15

Chapter 2 Inside Out: Feelings Frame Focus 29

Chapter 3 Outside In: What You See Is What You Get 43

Chapter 4 Nature: Born to Focus 55

Chapter 5 Nurture: This Is Your Brain on Attention 67

Chapter 6 Relationships: Attending to Different Worlds 81

Chapter 7 Productivity: Work Zone 99

Chapter 8 Decisions: Focusing Illusions 115

Chapter 9 Creativity: An Eye for Detail 133

Chapter 10 Focus Interruptus 145

Chapter 11 Disordered Attention 163

Chapter 12 Motivation: Eyes on the Prize 173

Chapter 13 Health: Energy Goes Where Attention Flows 189

Chapter 14 Meaning: Attending to What Matters Most 203

Afterword 219

Acknowledgments 221

Notes and Suggested Readings 223

Index 235